Explaining how the planet’s myriad crises are actually the birth pangs of a new Earth, this inspired exploration is Barbara Marx Hubbard’s prophetic call for a planetary shift. It explores the aftermath of the coming planetary renaissance that she has heralded for decades, and introduces an established popular global movement to cocreate a massive transition around a symbolic “Planetary Birthday” event on December 22, 2012. This volume features 12 evolutionary pioneers’ commentary on the author’s key themes of collective birth and conscious evolution, aiming to foster the emergence of a sustainable planetary civilization. Featured contributors include Ervin Laszlo, Michael Beckwith, Jack Canfield, Jean Houston, and Neale Donald Walsch.

EXCERPT

Chapter One: Letter Invitation to Birth 2012

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Cocreators of the emerging world: Welcome to Birth 2012 and the Birth 2012 Campaign!

Thus invitation to participate in the Birth is the most important letter I have ever written. Its intent, and the purpose of this book, is to present you with the greatest opportunity that humanity has ever consciously faced together: the effort to cocreate a planetary shift in time to avert global catastrophe by helping humanity cross the gap from "Here" -our current breakdowns- to "There" -our future infinite possibility.

Why is this invitation so urgent?

Because our current condition of over-growth in our finite Earth system is simply not sustainable.

We will either evolve toward a more sustainable, compassionate, and creating global system, or we face the real possibility of devolution and destruction of our life support system and of much of life on Earth -within our own or our children's lifetime!

This dangerous reality of motivating us to enter into what I call the first age of conscious evolution - that is, evolution by choice and not by chance. It means that we need to be causal in the actions and direction we take in this lifetime. What is being required of us is to learn to co-evolve with nature and cocreate with Spirit.

Again, why do I say that the timing is so urgent? Why now? Can't we wait a while and see how it turns out? No, we can't wait. It's like the birth of a baby. You might not be ready, but if the baby is ready, it's coming out now for better or for worse, It can either be a disastrous birth, or a gentle one.

We are being called to a great experiment, for no one alive on Earth knows how to make such a vast evolutionary shift in this short of a time. For the first time in our conscious history we are being given the opportunity to guide and ease our transition to the next stage of evolution. This situation is new for humanity, for we are the first Earth species to consciously face evolution or extinction.

This condition may be new for us, but it is not novel for the universe. Evolution operates by "punctuated equilibrium," meaning long periods of slow change that are punctuated by apparent sudden jumps. For billions of years, nature has been going through such creative leaps. It has progressed from energy evolving into matter, to planets like our Earth, to primitive life, to animal life, to human life, and now to us going around the next turn on the Spiral of Evolution toward the next phase of humanity. When we review this Big History, this deep-time past, we learn that certain lessons recur:

Crisis almost always precede transformation.

Problems are evolutionary drivers.

Nature takes jumps through greater synergy and cooperation with and among species.

We are facing transformative crisis and living such a leap now - the great wake-up call for the maturation of humanity.

We have reached that system theorists call a "chaos point." When a system in chaos is far from equilibrium, it tries to right itself by going backward to the old; this is why we see reactive moments everywhere in society right now. But an evolving system cannot return to the past. It must seek out new structures and systems, and quickly ascend to a new configuration - or else face rapid decline. Fortunately, according to the theory, small positive fluctuations in this sea of social chaos can jump the system to such a higher order.

This book is dedicated to the fact that we can each be a small fluctuation! The opportunity now being offered to us from the scared process of evolution is to participate in creating many positive fluctuations as pioneering souls. We are being called upon to shift from ego-centrism to living our Essential Selves; to discover our vocations of destiny; to give our unique Gift to the Shift; to work toward maximum global coherence; and to evolve our communities, our world, and ourselves.